Israel vs Gaza: 985 to 13 and Counting

All this talk of a proportionate response and Israel defending itself seems to be off the mark by the numbers. If a man hits you and you beat up his whole family is that proportionate response? Is shooting a man for throwing a rock at your window defending yourself?
The Associated Press reports that as of Wednesday, January 14th, more than 985 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 400 civilians. This is comparison to 13 Israeli’s who have been killed, including 3 civilians. It is estimated that 40% of all the Gaza casualties have been civilians . From 2005 through 2007 there were 86 Israeli’s killed, 8 of which were civilians, meaning less than 10% of all Israeli’s killed during the time were civilians.

Barack Obama was on ABC’s this week and reiterated his statement “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.”

Palestinians are seeing bombs dropped on their houses at a much more frequent rate than Israelis have had rockets shot at them, shouldn’t they have the right to defend themselves too? Way more Palestinian daughters have died because of this conflict than Israelis.

We’ve all heard the statement about how an aye for an eye leaves US all blind. What about an eye for 200 eyes?

Does Israel expect to be greeted as liberators in Gaza. Every family member they kill just adds to the desperation and hatred of Israel that creates the rocket launchers and the suicide bombers that they are trying to fight.

According to Wikipedia, since 2005 not including the recent conflict, there have been 1290 Palestinian casualties vs 86 Israeli casualties. Of those casualties, there were 222 Palestinian civilians killed vs 8 Israeli civilians killed. From 1987 through 2005 their have been 3196 Palestinian casualties including, 620 civilians and 946 Israeli casualties including 112 civilians.

So in these past two weeks, Israel has killed as many Palestinians as they have for the past 4 years.

In the face of the murder, terror and dead children, US politicians are not condemning the violence or the war but defending Israel’s right to defend themselves. David Patterson said “I believe the Israeli people, under constant attack from the Palestinian territories, have a right to protect themselves and I stand with them as they fight to defend the basic rights of humanity.”

Is Hamas not under attack by Israel is well? Given the disproportionate amount of casualties, isn’t it Palestine who is more need to defend their basic rights for humanity.

Mike Bloomberg said there is no measured response to terrorism, essentially saying that Israel has carte blanche to use what ever force it wants, regardless of civilian casualties.

I worked for many years as a teacher and had to break up several fights. If a 100 pound kid kicks 300 pound kid in the shins, and the 300 pound kid begins pummeling the 100 pound kid, I wouldn’t say that the 300 kid had a right to defend himself I would tell them both to stop fighting and try and break it up.

Maybe one of the reasons the US has been slow to criticize Israel is the Iraq war. 100,000 Iraqi civilians (some have estimated it in the millions) have been killed vs 4,000 soldiers.

If this were a boxing match it would’ve been declared a TKO a long time ago. If it were a football game, Israel would’ve put in their second string. Without a referee, the game has already gotten far out of hand.

In war there is rarely a right side and wrong side. if Hamas was wrong for breaking the ceasefire, that does not mean Israel is right for killing 382 civilians.

Israel is doing very little to improve their relations with both Palestine and their middle eastern neighbors with the current war on Gaza. They are only fueling the hatred for Israel in the arab world.

While I’ve heard several good arguments justifying Israel’s actions. I’ve always been told that number and pictures don’t lie. Given the lopsided score on the casualty count and gruesome pictures of the casualties, it is very clear that Israel is in the wrong along with Hamas.